Books on how to get the most out of your employees almost always follow the same formula. They start by noting that the secret of business success is employee-engagement: an engaged worker is more productive as well as happier. They go on to point out that most employees are the opposite of engaged (a 2013 Gallup Survey that claims that 70% of American workers are \u201cnot engaged\u201d\u009d or \u201cactively disengaged\u201d\u009d gets a lot of play). They blame this dismal state of affairs on the legacy of Frederick Winslow Taylor, a Philadelphia-born Quaker who became one of America\u2019s first management consultants and in 1911 wrote a book called \u201cThe Principles of Scientific Management\u201d\u009d. And finally they reveal the secret of making your employees more engaged: treat them like human beings rather than parts in an industrial machine.<\/p>\n
The first two books under review are cases in point. They both rely on over-familiar examples of high-performance companies, such as \u201cfunky, funny\u201d\u009d Zappos and CNN. They come from the same school of poor writing\u201d\u201dsloppy sentences, ugly management jargon and pseudo-folksy style. Stan Slap is particularly slapdash. \u201cThe Power of Thanks\u201d\u009d, by Eric Mosley and Derek Irvine, claims that a \u201cPositivity-Dominated Workplace creates and maintains competitive advantage\u201d\u009d. The best way to do this is to thank people regularly. Mr Slap\u2019s \u201cUnder the Hood\u201d\u009d claims that the best way to maximise business performance is to look under the bonnet of your company, discover the employee culture that lies inside, and then fine-tune it. Fine-tuning involves things like praising good workers and sacking bad ones (\u201cone of the biggest opportunities to create a legend is when the hammer falls right on the culture and someone has to go\u201d\u009d).<\/p>\n
Laszlo Bock\u2019s \u201cWork Rules!\u201d\u009d is much better. Mr Bock has been head of \u201cpeople operations\u201d\u009d at Google since 2006 and has seen the company grow from 6,000 to almost 60,000 people….<\/p>\n